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A good web design is what every business wishes to have. It is only upon hiring the best web design agency that you can be assured of the best web design services. After taking your business online, the story doesn’t end just there; you need to ensure a good online presence. This is the trick behind every successful online business. Developing the best website for your business needs entirely depends on website design services that you get from your select agency. Now, how do you go about hiring the right web design agency? This might not a hard task as many think if the right guidelines and steps are followed.

You need a web design agency that is able to design and develop a usable website capable to attract more traffic. The basics of website design require experts who understand the whole process so well that they can provide the best design services. It may be time consuming and expensive but still worth the pain since it is likely to bring in more returns in the future. A creative design agency that employs great creativity, does the work in time, giving attention to detail at an affordable cost is all you need to look for. To ensure you get a design agency that best fits your needs you need to follow this guide;

Check out the Clients and Portfolios of the Web Design Agency

History of any business is very crucial in determining their suitability and expertise. In the same case, a design agency that has worked for a long time, gains experience in the provision of their services and thus a likelihood to do a better job. Checking on the company’s past clients, you can sample out the websites they have designed and see their work. The color combinations, creativity and ideas put into the work can tell you how suitable that agency is in designing your website. The web design portfolio is all you need to check out and compare with other agencies to select the best agency that seems to deliver services as exactly as you need them.

Interview the Specific Web Design Agencies before Hiring One

One on one interview with the selected agency will help in discussing all your website needs with the company so that they are able to integrate all your needs while designing the website. Web design entails communication with the target audience therefore demand that the agency first understands what exactly you intend to communicate to the audience before laying their hands on the work. During the interview, you will determine whether they understand your business or whether they have worked with a similar case before. In the interview, you will also get to determine the kind of expertise available in the web design agency. A good agency should have a pool of web design experts who work together to ensure effective web design for the clients.

Know Their Primary OS and Programming Languages

This is the technical part of web design. This is where you need to emphasize on to determine the strength of the agency. The software systems and languages they use are very important in selecting the best web design agency. Open source PHP/MySOL and ASP. Net programming languages are examples of your considerations. Also determine the technical strength from listening on their technical advice.
Estimate the Deadline to Complete the Project and the Cost

The best website design agency will offer their services within the shortest time possible without compromising on the quality of the website. The same case happens with the cost of doing the entire work. All the work should be done within your budget. All factors considered, creativity and new innovations in designs are both crucial to consider.

Do not go through a lot of agony finding the right website design agency. Just follow the guidelines above and you will have the best option ever.

In the past, we used to browse the internet using laptops and desktops. But with increased usage of mobile devices, times have since changed. Terms such as Responsive Web Design (RWD) have now become a commonplace. But what is RWD? Simply put, RWD is making a website readily accessible from any device be it a desktop, a laptop or a mobile gadget.

You can access it on a desktop using any browser, iPhone running Safari or a tablet using Firefox and see the same website only visually adjusted to screen size. Navigations and the tabs of a responsive design adapt to the device, making it more impacting and desirous. An adaptable site is beneficial in several ways.

1. Good For SEO

The real reason why you have a website is for the users to find you and get leads. Responsive web design helps you to achieve exactly that. With more than 60% of users accessing the web using mobile devices, there is no better way to increase organic traffic than having a responsive design.

Some website owners make a mistake of having multiple versions of the same website, one for the regular users, and another for mobile users. The practice is not good for SEO. Google and other search engines algorithm frown on mobile-only sites especially those with .mobi in the Url and ranks responsive designs higher.

2. Division Link Equity

If you have multiple versions of a similar site for different devices, you will be dividing your links between two or more sites. This could impact on link equity of your site. Responsive design will eliminate this problem since all links will be redirecting to one website for more SEO benefit.

3. Avoid Duplicate Content

Search engines are very strict on duplication. Having the same content on different versions can easily make your website penalized by search engines for having the same content on different pages. You can avoid this by having one page and getting it to adjust to any device.

4. Good for Analytics

Website analytics is essential for business decisions. With an adaptable design, it would be easier to track your visitors and monitor their behavior using analytics. You can easily quantify how a change in design or any other aspect of your website helped to attract or push away customers.

Audience analysis makes it much easier to see what customers are clicking more and how much time each is spending on a particular product, and this will greatly help you to design your products to suit your clients’ needs.

5. Off-page Experience

RWD improves the log-off browsing experience. You can convey your content when there is no connectivity. Email newsletters and other substances can be expedited in hybrid HTML5 applications, giving users an enhanced experience is the absence of internet connectivity.

6. An Edge Against Competition

When user experience is nothing but pitiable, you stand to lose your clients to competitors. When users access your website via a mobile device and have to scroll right and left to get what they want, they will likely close your website quickly and get back to the search engine to get another site.

Responsive sites are light and swift to open. The redirecting process is mostly absent, and users get a consistent web experience, which helps to retain your customers and attract new ones. This will give you an edge against competitors as it will reach more audience, reduce rebound rate, and increase conversion.

In the recent past, infinite scrolling has increasingly been applied in web design. It is because it makes users of the websites to spend more time on the websites and thus get more information about the business. Unlike when the one has to turn to the next page to see what is next, with infinite scrolling, the user keeps on moving down the page without even realizing how far they have moved. They get large amounts of information from the page. The enterprise is thus able to achieve its objectives of passing certain information to the users as compared to when users click next to view the next pages. The scrolling of the page, however, can be non-appealing to website users if poorly done. While designing the website, careful measures should be put in place to ensure that feature of infinite, scrolling attracts the page user to keep moving down and thus get the maximum information.

When designing the website, you should make sure that the system managing your content is paginated. Pagination allows the access to all your content by Google. It should make all the content accessible. Items should as well not appear twice, that is, no overlap. Pagination involves the division of the content into segments. A distinct URL is then created for every page. It also requires links for moving back and forward.

Divide your work properly into segments. Making an effective infinite scroll page should avoid as much as possible the chances of content overlap since it could be misleading and confusing. The content should thus be well put into their respective categories.

The menus on your page should be well structured. All the relevant internal pages should be included in the menus. Pertinent articles, categories, tags among others, should feature in your menus.

The use of the interlinking strategy could also be effective in your website page. It involves the inclusion of such things as links leading one to related posts, which are added at the end of an article. It can as well be achieved by the use of random articles. The technique is a great way to having your pages widely distributed and ensuring that the authority of the domain is high.

You can also improve you website pages by the use of sitemaps. They enhance the relationships between components and pages thus will make the scrolling more efficient. It is recommended that one avo

The importance of a website’s textual content, or ‘copywrite’ as it’s called in the biz, is embodied in the very same reason you’re reading this sentence. Visitors read your website. However, whether that’s for 2 minutes, or even 2 seconds, has a lot to do with the care and thought you put into making your written content count.

In the better interest of mankind, here at YellowDawg we’ve compiled a list of 4 important reasons why your website’s textual content is pivotal to its development.

1. Usability

How many times have you visited a site and spent more than 30 seconds trying to find out what it is you’re looking for? If you have, chances are you don’t even recall what the purpose of that website was – never mind bookmarking, signing-up for their newsletter or recommending it to a friend.

In a society where time is money, good textual content gives your visitors a reason to browse your website. In fact, it will not only capture your visitor’s interest, it will help them navigate and enjoy their browsing experience. By carefully considering vocabulary, placement and structure, textual content will direct your visitors to the information, products or services you’re trying to communicate and/or or sell. And, quite frankly, nothing about your website is more important than that.

2. First Impressions

Perhaps it’s due to my liberal arts background, but nothing puts me off more than finding misspellings and/or grammatical errors while browsing through a website. Granted, the proverbial ‘typo’ does happen – we’re all guilty of them. However, a website is not your average email or Facebook wall-posting, rather it is the transmitter of your company’s first impression. And call me crazy, but I’ll guess that your intended first impression does not involve incompetence.

In many ways the content on your website is like the cover letter on a resume. It should be intriguing, informative, to-the-point, and have some sort of well-structured flow. Negating this jeopardizes your chances of making that positive first impression.

3. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

With the rise of Google, SEO has become a preeminent lion of the internet kingdom. Simply stated, the more conducive your website is to Goolge’s search engine algorithms, the better chance it has of showing up at the top of a search page. ‘The lions share’ of this conduciveness is achieved through your website’s textual content – both in terms of quality and quantity. Key words, for instance, have a large degree of influence, but simply writing down as many of them as you can is not as effective as incorporating them into a constructive piece of writing.

If you’re thinking of looking to web traffic as a significant part of your business plan, pick up a book on SEO. From what I’ve read thus far, Search Optimization for Dummies gives you a great general overview of the topic and will have you content-crazy in no time. Check it out here

4. Be distinguished

A website with well-written textual content is miles ahead of websites which have otherwise. Much like a good newspaper or magazine, it will endure time and people will look to it as a reliable source of information or advice. If you’re a company launching a new website and your competitors already enjoy a strong web presence, well-written content is a great way to distinguish yourself.

If you’re interested in learning more about how to create distinguishing content, drive traffic, improve first impressions, and make your website ‘sticky’, we at YellowDawg can help.

Social media marketing tools like blogs, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn have been around for a years, but companies are just starting to understand and tap into their value as a cost-effective way to grow their business.

Social Media Marketing is about:

Increasing visibility amongst your target audience

Attracting profitable customers

Building credibility and “social capital” with your followers

We help you harness the power of social media to build relationships and establish trust with your followers

We also provide social media training to get you and your staff up-to-speed on the social media landscape, show you the most popular and effective tools and ensure you maximize your time online, for optimal results.

Reputation Management
A growing area of concern for companies is “reputation management”. Whether your company is engaged in social media or not, your customers, employees, investors and prospects are talking about your company and its products.

Using powerful tools like ScoutLabs and Radian6, we monitor and analyze social media conversations across the web, including discussions about your company, products, employees and competitors, to look for areas of opportunity.

Tracking and Analysis
Our expertise includes “Key Performance Indicator” (KPI) definition, tracking and analysis. You will receive regular, insightful and actionable reports on how your marketing program is performing and its return-on-investment.

Here’s the scenario. You have an art company. You have an old website that you love. It works well for what it is, but you have a major content update to do with many new pieces and copy. You have different categories of updates which are not accomodated on your old site, which will require part of the sites navigation to be overhauled, as well as many pages to be updated.

So what are your choices? Well there are two clear choices. Update the site or make a new one. What? Make a new one? Lets break this down.

Advantages for staying with current website:

Cheaper than getting a new site done
The site is familiar to regular visitors
The update would happen a little bit faster than re-doing the entire website this time around
Requires little time to request the site update

Advantages for having a new site done:

New web technologies, such as Content Management Systems (CMS), allow for massive updates that do not break the structure of the site. The other benefit to using a CMS is the speed of the updates is always faster.

Planning a site with realistic business objectives in mind always produces a finer product. Chances are that the requirements have changed or have become more clear — IE: Where are you making your money? Lets talk about that.

Is it time for a company re-brand? Are you already in the process of re-branding? A new website is the perfect opportunity to launch a new identity, including logo and taglines.

Optics to consider with staying with the old website:
It’s going to stretch the website to it’s limits at best, appear cluttered at the end, and ultimately make you look somewhat disorganized.

Items to consider with going through the process of building a new site:
Since this is your second time around, it is likely that you will have a much more straight forward idea of what the new site needs to accomplish for the business. You have the experience of the process already, and know where to start. This isn’t your first time, so it ought to be an easier process. That being said, you also know it takes time to carefully plan it out and execute the plan. Understand that it is going to cost some more now, and that it is an investment that is strictly for 1) making the company more money in a direct or indirect way and 2) save money later by being considerably faster (and hence less expensive) to update.

Here is an example of a website that has been updated effectively using a wordpress theme: citzine.ca

In this day and age, everyone who is really in business has a website, but that doesn’t mean that it’s doing anything for them. I highly encourage you to speak with an expert about your site in business and marketing terms if you are unsure about your current site and what it’s actually doing for you. It could make an enormous difference to your online presence.

Lets get right to the point here. Smart planning has always saved money in business. In this day and age, it starts with your business plan. Plan what you are going to do, how you’re going to do it, and when.

It’s like anything else. Going to Staples without a list of what you need will certainly yield you a good solid hour of looking at black leather dayplanners (if you’re a guy) or color coded paper products (if you’re a girl) and maybe you’ll leave with a red stapler, wondering what just happened. When you get back to the office you will come to the startling realization that you went to get ink for the printer, and you’ll have to spend the time to go back, get what you really needed in the first place, and come back.

So then, lets say it takes you two hours instead of an hour to get an ink cartridge. If we are to measure the value of ones time in ink cartridges, an hour of ones time would be worth half an ink cartridge at this point. I know, that sounds bad. It is.

You haven’t just wasted time; you have effectively cut the value of your time in half.

Lets apply this to a business process of a marketing campaign; lets say it is a poster job for your new music store. You see two or three draft designs to start off. You sign off on the direction of one of them. But you haven’t done your business plan yet and you don’t know what genres you will be specializing in. You see a beautiful final version of a poster with awesome colors, your logo looks fabulous, and there is some young good looking person on it listening to music on their iPod. The approved poster goes to print; ten thousand copies, appearing all over the city in brilliant full-bleed color. A week later, you have nailed down that you are specializing in Country music, and you fill your boots with the first order form with your music suppliers. Cowboy up! Posters go up, the store opens, and everyone is excited that you have the new Eminem since they saw him on the poster for your music store. What? Who? Uh!

In the few seconds that it took you to say “yes that looks great,” a significant portion of your marketing budget, if not all of it, has been decimated by sheer and utter lack of planning.

You may think this is an unrealistic scenario. It is not. Once the wheels are set in motion in business, they can only be reversed with money. Be wise with yours. Plan ahead.